Another chapter in Sellers' tasty Story

Among the truffles and foie gras on the menu at Michelin-starred restaurant Story, sits the unlikely foodie offering of bread and dripping.

As crowd-pleasers go, the traditional post Sunday lunch treat isn't perhaps what you'd expect to see in such an establishment, but nevertheless, it's winning Story's upcoming chef and owner Tom Sellers plenty of praise, not least from his old man.

"The bread and dripping goes down well in the restaurant," explains the 27-year-old, who opened the London hotspot last year. "It's a playful dish and also there's a lot of history behind it, so people really like that one. My father used to eat it, so that's where the influence came from."

Brought up in Nottingham, the chef's own history reads like a Cinderella story. Starting off on the bottom rung of the kitchen ladder as a pot washer, Sellers went on to cook at Noma in Copenhagen, which was this year ranked number one in Restaurant magazine's World's 50 Best Restaurants list, and won his first Michelin star a mere five months after opening Story, his first restaurant.

Not bad for the boy who had no formal training.

"I just fell into cooking, to be honest," explains Sellers, who also won Food And Travel magazine's Breakthrough Chef Of The Year award in 2013.

"School wasn't really for me," he adds. "I left school at an early age and kind of fell into food and cookery. I learned on the job with the chefs I was working alongside and for."

He's a big fan of pickling vegetables, a hangover from his days in Denmark where condiments and pickling were all the rage, but "sadly doesn't get much time" to cook at home any more, though Sellers seems pleased with the constant stream of work.

For his latest project, he's teamed up with Lurpak to become the face of their Cook's Range Clarified Butter, alongside TV chef Valentine Warner.

He hopes he can encourage people to be more "comfortable with butter" when cooking at home, whether that's using it for herb butters, cooking meat in it or to confit fish.

"It's something I've always used in the restaurant," Sellers adds. "I've worked with it in other restaurants and I'm a big fan."

Fancy emulating Sellers' kitchen wizardry in your own kitchen? Here are three recipes he's created for the Lurpak campaign which use their clarified butter.

Preheat oven to 100C. In a large frying pan, seal off the beef so that it's nice and caramelised (use a little butter for this). Season well with salt and pepper and remove from the pan

In the same pan, add a small amount of butter. Sweat off the horseradish, thyme, bay leaf and peppercorns.

Once the ingredients are sweated, place them in a baking dish with the beef on top. Warm the rest of the butter and pour over the rib, covering it.

Place in a low oven and cook for about 30 minutes. Take a digital probe and check the centre of the beef. You want to aim for it to be at 50C. Continue to cook the beef until it reaches this temperature.

Once the beef is 50C, remove from the oven and allow to rest for 20 minutes. The temperature of the beef should rise to about 55C during this period. Remove the beef from the pan and carve.

:: HERB BUTTER PASTA

(Serves 2)

150g butter

1 garlic clove

2 sprigs of picked rosemary

4 sprigs of picked thyme

10 wild garlic leaves (if you can't find these, try adding an extra half clove of garlic to the clarified butter, but be sure to remove the green heart to prevent bitterness)

Place all of the herbs and P armesan in the blender and add a twist of pepper.

Warm the butter with the garlic clove.

In a separate pan, boil some salted water, add the pasta and cook. This should take three to four minutes.

While the pasta is cooking, pour the warm butter over the herbs in the blender and blend until smooth.

Add the vinegar and adjust the taste with a little lemon juice. Strain off the pasta and toss it in the herb butter and serve.

:: POTTED SHRIMP

(Serves 2)

250g brown shrimps

1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced

1 chopped shallot

10g chopped parsley

1 wild garlic leaf, sliced (if you can't find this, try adding an extra half clove of garlic to the clarified butter, but be sure to remove the green heart to prevent bitterness)

Fresh nutmeg

Zest of 1 lemon

1/2 chopped chilli

200g butter

Black pepper

In a saute pan, warm half of the butter, sweat off the shallot, chopped chilli and sliced garlic.

Once sweated, add the shrimps and remove from the heat. Then add the wild garlic and chopped parsley.

Season with a little fresh nutmeg, a twist of black pepper and some grated lemon zest

Place in a kilner jar. The aim is to have a layer of butter on top of the mixture. Use the remaining butter to ensure that the pot is sealed and chill the potted shrimp until the butter has set hard on the top.

Serve the potted shrimp with toast or Melba toast. You can make your own Melba toast by slicing regular toast horizontally through the crust and then blasting it in an oven for five minutes until it curls up.

:: Tom Sellers is promoting Lurpak's new Cook's Range Clarified Butter, available from all major retailers, priced £3.25 for 250g

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